I would love it if the Wyze team might look into adding RTSP firmware that we can add to our new v3 Pans that we bought to enable RTSP. It worked really well for me on my regular v3’s and have made other home integrations a lot more useful. Please consider this Wyze, your products are great, lets make it a little more open for those of us that want to use it a bit more creatively. Thanks.
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Not going to happen. Wyze pulled all the RTSP firmware for security reasons and have said pretty much that no ongoing development is underway and they have no plans for RTSP on new cameras.
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Why can one not easily integrate with Home Assistant (even with cloud plus) with they Wyse cameras or is it just me? . It seems Wyse has moved to their domain for camera where they want everything fully in their control. Also, is there a reason that Wyse totally dropped RTSP? In fact, the only way you get the firmware is from the wayback machine
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No you are not the only one and I totally agree.
I have a new V3 Pro and, to put it mildly, disappointed by the lack of integration. Had this been clear I would never have purchased it.
The camera is very god but it has been crippled by their corporate greed.
If I could find RTSP firmware for it on Wayback and if there should be a problem with it is it still possible to do factory reset to the current version
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You still can. There are a few different ways to do it. I have nearly every camera model (40 total cameras) and they can basically all do this.
That is not entirely accurate. You can actually still download it directly from Wyze, though they have made it a little more difficult to find. I believe this is because it is lacking the security updates, but they seem to still allow it to be downloaded because for those who are going to use it anyway, it’s still safest to get it from them directly. If you really want the deprecated V3 RTSP firmware here is where it is on the Wyze website
V3 RTSP firmware directly from Wyze:
https://download.wyzecam.com/firmware/rtsp/demo_v3_RTSP_4.61.0.1.zip
Absolutely. The cameras limitations were such that they had to run separate firmware branches but they they said it was too hard on their limited resources to keep up to date with 2 completely separate branches of firmware. Wyze made drastic changes to their security over the last year, and none of those updates were included in the RTSP firmware since it was created before the changes took place. Since the RTSP firmware is lacking critical security updates, Wyze can’t in good conscience recommend people keep using it. Thus it has been de-listed and Wyze tries to get people to stop using it because it hasn’t had any recent security updates.
However, people are going to do it anyway, such as through the Wayback machine, or there are several other third-party sites offering it. The problem is that it can be hard for the average person to confirm that those files haven’t been tampered with by those third parties. There are ways to compare the hash, etc, but that is not really within most people’s capabilities, especially if they don’t already have a copy of the original file, and if they did, they wouldn’t need to be downloading and comparing it anyway. So, presumably, rather than risk people desperately downloading the insecure firmware from a bunch of 3rd party randos, Wyze still has a link to it on their website, but it’s de-listed because it’s technically still not up-to-date and secure. BUT if you’re going to get it anyway, even though it’s got security issues, it’s still better you get it directly from Wyze than trusting some rando who may have added malicious code.
Sadly, Wayback only gives links to things that used to exist, and since the V3Pro has never had RTSP firmware, Wayback machine is pointless for this. However, there are OTHER ways to get RTSP for the V3Pro and some of the other cameras.
- Docker Wyze Bridge: GitHub - mrlt8/docker-wyze-bridge: WebRTC/RTSP/RTMP/LL-HLS bridge for Wyze cams in a docker container
- This will give RTSP for all Wyze cameras that use the TUTK SDK…but it will not work for the BCPro, FLPro, VDBPro, or OG cams, though they have devs working on integrating some of those newer cameras in a different way.
- I use this. You just have to have a computer run it 24/7
- Wyze Hacks: GitHub - HclX/WyzeHacks: Hacks I discovered allowing Wyze camera owners to do customizations
- This is limited to a couple of camera models, and not everything works well anymore due to recent security updates that interfered with the access it previously leveraged, but it works with official Wyze Firmware, and all you do is install this mod on an SD card.
- Tiny Cam Pro: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alexvas.dvr.pro&hl=en_US&gl=US
- This works for almost EVERY camera model right now. You need to run a Tiny Cam Server to get the RTSP streams. Basically you’ll want a a dedicated old Android phone or tablet that you will leave on at home all the time, or run an Android emulator on a computer. Then you grab the URL for a camera and plug that in to whatever RTSP program you want.
- As an added bonus, the Tiny Cam Cofounder was actually hired by Wyze a few years ago. That might be why he has figured out how to get his app working with all the Wyze cams, while Docker Wyze Bridge still hasn’t figured them all out yet.
Summary: You can still get RTSP for nearly every Wyze camera. Wyze doesn’t proactively offer the official firmware anymore due to limited resources & other conflicts, but they have allowed 3rd parties to offer alternative solutions and even went so far as to offer them than official API Key to use so that they wouldn’t get locked out of the new security updates. If they were trying to prevent things, they wouldn’t have done that, but they aren’t expending their own resources to develop multiple firmware branches anymore.
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I have not looked at the configuration screens for my V3 connected at my barn for a long time. I updated to the RTSP demo a while ago, but never thought they would allow the Garage Controller and Flood Lights to work with it. I thought all accessories were blocked until I saw it on this camera with RTSP. I am considering trying to connect it to my floodlights or garage controller and see if it works. I would love to have my Synology NAS to continously record my Driveway Floodlight activity. Am I missing somethign or should it work?
@carverofchoice this is an amazing post, but I have to ask (as the dummy here).
Why do people want RTSP? What is the unique value? What scenarios does it enable?
Thank you!
Thank you.
So, people want RTSP because it allows them to control a lot of things with streaming media over a network or the internet. In addition to things like play, pause, record, seek, and adjust the quality, RTSP also supports multicasting, (multiple clients can receive the same stream from a single server, AND can even show multiple cameras on a screen organized in any way they want), while, for example, the Wyze Cam OG is normally limited to 2 devices streaming it at a time.
Some other uses of RTSP include:
- Local storage of a video streams onto a large harddrive which is WAY cheaper than an SD card costs, and will be stored inside your house, so it can’t be stolen as easily. So instead of being limited by an SD card size, you could easily get harrdrives to store video for WAY longer and way safer.
- Additionally, related to local storage, if a person breaks the camera the local storage harddrive from RTSP will still have recorded up to the VERY SECOND it was broken, while an SD card might miss up to the last 60 seconds of video and the Cloud might miss up to the last 5 minutes of recording if someone breaks a camera. RTSP would allow every second to be recorded so nothing is ever missed.
- There are lots of other cool projects that can be done with RTSP. For example, some people use various opensource projects and other software to do really cool things with their video streams through RTSP. For example, there are people who use a project called “Frigate” which does FREE object detection from your camera feed locally in your home without your video having to go through another company. You can train it to recognize ANYTHING you want, including person detection, chicken detection, faces, license plates, Fire, certain kinds of clothing or symbols, Amazon, UPS, Fedex, package, dog, cat, deer, toys, monitor health and growth of various plants and flowers, and give you alerts about any of them, even specific pets distinguished from others.
- Then you could set up rules to tell other smart devices in your house to do something. For example, if you link your Cameras to Frigate through RTSP then link Frigate through Home Assistant, you could set up cool automations like: "If my Videodoorbell recognizes my face (or the face of someone in my family that I approved in this rule), THEN automatically unlock the front door (assuming the front door lock is also a smart lock that works in Home Assistant, or links to it through Google or Alexa or something). Or you can have it make announcements. Maybe if the Doorbell detects your spouse or child or someone coming up to it, you can have it announce “[So-&-So is home]” or “Welcome Home [Bob]” and then have it automatically turn on certain lights for them in the style they like or where they are likely headed. You can have it do all sorts of stuff. If you have a Smart sprinkler or smart hose device, you could have your camera detect if someone else’s dog walks onto your lawn and turn on the sprinklers in that area so they don’t leave their waste in your lawn. Really the possibilities seem unlimited.
- Some people have run RTSP feeds through a traffic analyzer to figure out what the traffic patterns are in front of their house or wherever it is. Some do license plate capture incase someone does something they don’t like or a neighbor reports burglary, etc…then they can run the plates of people around that time and share suspicious ones with the police to help capture malfactors.
- Some people like to live stream their cameras to Youtube. For example, some people will build a birdhouse, and have a camera built into it so it can watch the bird nest live 24/7 and record the whole bird family progression. They can even do a cool timelapse of the entire period of a bird family moving in, laying eggs, the chicks hatching, eating, growing and then flying off, and shrink the whole lifecycle into a small clip of a few minutes while allowing ANYONE to watch it live on youtube at any time. Or maybe to live stream something else in public, maybe a waterfall, or campus, or sunsets on the beach or anything else. Some people will even have TV’s hung on their Wall with a Windowframe around them to pretend it’s a window and live stream some of those live RTSP feeds to the TV 24/7…some studies have shown that can actually improve people’s mental health.
- You could fairly easily hang a tablet on your front door or near your front door and have it either constantly stream your front camera or doorbell camera or turn on just when a person is detected or rings the doorbell (there are ways to do this one without RTSP, but RTSP gives a lot more control and options)
Basically, RTSP liberates your camera feed so you can use it in lots of various ways with more granular control with lots of options and cool things you can do with it. That is why it is so popular. Hopefully, the above examples give a few ideas of things people like to do with RTSP. There are many other possibilities. Does that give a good entry-level explanation related to why people want RTSP? Their reasons might be different from the above, but the above are common examples.
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Wow, that is extremely well written!
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As 100% of Carvers replies are,
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Thank you @carverofchoice . Much appreciated.
One more question please. Does any of Wyze’s competitors provide RTSP? Not looking to switch but to understand market dymamics.
Thanks
I bought a Wansview Q5 has RTSP and ONVIF to replace my Wyze can V3 Pro because I hadn’t realised that RTSP was so crippled by Wyze.
The Wyze cam V3 Pro is a neat camera but I would never have bought it had I known the RTSP was so inaccessible.
The Wansview also has the advantages of being low cost and has PTZ
Amcrest does. I believe the new YoLink cameras do.
I am still looking for POE with PIR RTSP or ONVIF Outdoor.
The Amcrest cameras I bought are outdoor POE. From everything I’ve read they support both ONVIF and RTSP. They don’t use PIR but they do have person and vehicle detection as well as intrusion detection and tripwire functions.
Too many false alerts if no PIR…wind, snow, rain. I can’t understand why anyone would have an outdoor without PIR. I have had an Amherst and returned it for that reason.
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It varies. For example, a lot of the bigger name brand smart camera companies like Ring, Nest, Arlo, Blink, etc do not support RTSP. But a lot of other do, and get a competitive edge by supporting it, such as Amcrest, Reolink, Hikvision, Eufy, SV3C, and more.
It should also be mentioned that some cameras will technically support RTSP, but will take away a bunch of features/functionality if you choose to use it. For example, I have a couple of Eufy indoor cameras that I use for redundancy in case Wyze has an AWS outage or something, and those Eufy cams at least USED TO support RTSP (I don’t see the option anymore, so maybe they removed it from that model). But, as I recall when I first got them, Eufy told me that if I turned on RTSP that they would only allow my cameras to have a reduced 1080p resolution (even if I toggled on 2K, it would still only be 1080p) and wouldn’t allow me to use 2K HD resolution unless I turned off RTSP. They also took away some other features. It was a while ago and I don’t remember all the details now, but I do recall that I decided I didn’t like everything I lost from using RTSP with them, so I turned it off on those particular cams.
On the bright side, as I described above, there are a couple of options to still get RTSP on most of your Wyze cams.
As stated above, I personally use Docker Wyze Bridge. I might get around to having a Tiny Cam Server convert my 6 Wyze Floodlight Pros to RTSP too, since Docker Wyze Bridge only supports the cams with TUTK protocol and Tiny Cam Pro converts basically everything.
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The Amcrest cameras have smart alerts built-in. I’ve been testing them for alerts on just people and they seem to be working, without PIR.
Wait for heavy rains and snow.
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